10 Other Ways To Unclog Your Creative Pipes

Brian Tonner, Copywriter at Leith, offers up some alternative ways to get your creative on.

1/ Look at things.

If you get stuck write about the first thing you see when you look out the window. If there are no windows, stare deep into your Art Director’s beard, also known as, the hirsute abyss.

2/ Write with a pen.

If you type that is. Or try a new font, pad or colour. The comic book writer, Neil Gaiman writes in green ink one day and in red the next. Unfortunately, when his words are released, they only come in black.

3/ Alter your state of consciousness.

According to well regarded writer and psychonaut, Aldous Huxley, you should alter your consciousness to match the changing environment around you. He suggests taking mescaline as the sun goes down. Which is cactus juice. Loopy juice. Makes the brain bend, apparently. If that sounds tricky, just have a coffee, or an apple juice. Or if you enjoy beveraging, polish off half a bottle of claret and see if your muse crashes the party. In Silicon Valley ­- the place, not the show - ­speccy brain boxes survive on Nootropics, better known by their street name, smart drugs. Is this cheating? Will these brain enhancers bring about intellectual armageddon? Or have we found the skeleton key to the doors of perception that Jim Morrison lost in the 1960s?

4/ Go on an exercise bike.

Arrange for a belter of a tune to come on about 20 minutes into your workout. If you time it right, as your endorphins rocket up your spine and into your skull, the guitar solo in Freebird should just be taking off. Something related to the creative brief should come to you. Eureka!

5/ Go for a walk.

Up the street or over to a bookshelf. Stephen King goes for a 2 hour walk everyday. Anything could happen. He even got run over by a van on one of his walks. See? Anything can happen. Ultimately, after his rehabilitation, he wrote about that particular walk.

6/ Watch Lethal Weapon.

Or, if you’re a reader, read the novelisation. If you’re working on a retail brief, imagine Detective Martin Riggs delivering the lines:

“GET YOURSELF DOWN TO CARPET LAND! EVERYTHING MUST GO! OFFER ENDS 29TH OF MARCH!”

A twist on a phrase or a shunt in the rhythms might improve things.

7/ Read the brief again.

Then write the poetry you read between the lines.

8/ Chuck Palahniuk says, find where it hurts and write that.

Writing off big scary emotions, like fear, jealousy and joy can open up new ideas. A brief to sell more umbrellas and writing off fear might give you an idea about pollutants in rainwater or something. Or a smaller fear, like the rain messing up your new hairdo. Buy a brolly.

9/ Check out Brian Eno’s Oblique cards.

If Edward DeBono’s 6 hats make you scratch your head and yawn, try these. They’re like the titles of Manic Street Preachers albums or a Paul Arden book if Paul Arden was taking the piss.

10/ Nap.

A quick nap can make you befuddled or energised. Salvador Dali would hold a teaspoon and delicately balance it on top of a wine bottle as he drifted into a doze. When sleep took him, the spoon would fall from his hand and clatter off the glass, waking him up with a start. And while his mind was all over the place, he would sit up, grab a pad and scribble madly.